That was Ford back in the late 70's.... and the problem was real. I remember there were a lot of cars parked on incline at that time for test at the Transmission & Axle Division in Livonia - a plant that was four miles from home and my dad's workplace for 33 years. People who owned these models were put their cars in Park with the engine still running, then step out only to get run over when the car slipped into reverse.

I personally experienced one of our Fords (74 Torino) momentarily lurch backwards during shutoff when I took my foot off the brake... and it wasn't the normal rollback for parking pawl engagement.

My pet peeve was the media who wrote article after article of how terrible this problem was without mentioning HOW it was happening.... the nuts and bolts behind it; very frustrating for a technical person such as myself... until finally I found an obscure article where someone wrote and explained how slop (tolerance stackup) in the system allowed the column shifter to indicate Park (and, I believe the lever detent was engaged in Park, though I'm not sure about this and the lever detent may have been between Park and Reverse), yet the transmission engagement was sitting between Park and Reverse detents, allowing reverse to still function..... sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. The later transmissions were then designed with Drive and Reverse spaced considerably farther apart.

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95 E320 Cabriolet, 169K